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Meteorite Misses Waco, Texas

Print
2001 (made)
Artist/Maker
Place of origin

One of the devices used by artist Cornelia Parker is to subject familiar everyday objects to extremes of temperature, pressure or force. The resulting transformations retain a residual trace of their original form and seem to invite the viewer to reconsider their own relationship with history and mortality.

For the suite of map works called ‘Meteorite Lands in the Middle of Nowhere: The American Series’ Parker heated a tiny meteorite and carefully scorched six selected place names in the USA on as many maps. Some of Parker’s meteorites make direct hits, others are near misses, but the associative power of the place names she has chosen is self-evident: Bagdad, Louisiana, Paris, Texas, and Bethlehem, North Carolina, are all hits; Roswell, New Mexico, Waco, Texas, and Truth or Consequences, also New Mexico, are all misses. In another series Parker has meteorites landing on sites in London.

The work plays with the almost obsessive place meteorites now have in the popular imagination, given their potential capacity to completely annihilate the earth. Parker suggests that by displacing fear onto this external threat, meteors distract humanity from the dangers it poses to itself.

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view Mapping the imagination Maps are simplified schematic diagrams that employ a universal visual language through which we codify and comprehend our world. We all use maps in our daily lives as sources of information about places, routes, networks, and boundaries. They offer us the means of describing and understand...

Object details

Categories
Object type
Titles
  • Meteorite Misses Waco, Texas (assigned by artist)
  • Meteorite Lands in the Middle of Nowhere: The American Series (series title)
Materials and techniques
Printed paper scorched with a meteorite
Brief description
Map work by Cornelia Parker, 'Meteorite Misses Waco, Texas'; 2001
Physical description
A printed road atlas of North America, opened to a page showing Waco, Texas and surrounding area. To the left of Waco the surface sheet has been burned through to pages beneath which also bear scorch marks the whole is fixed to a support card and framed in a deep frame.
Dimensions
  • Outside of frame height: 47.1cm
  • Outside of frame width: 65cm
  • Outside of frame depth: 3.7cm
Copy number
7/20
Marks and inscriptions
'Meteorite Misses Waco, Texas / 2001 / Cornelia Parker / 7/20' (Title; date; signature; edition number)
Gallery label
(2007)
This is from a series called Meteorite Lands in the Middle of Nowhere for which the artist heated a tiny meteorite and scorched six selected place names in the USA on as many maps. Some of her meteorites make direct hits, others are near misses, but all the place names have been chosen for their powerful associations.
Credit line
Purchased through the Julie and Robert Breckman Print Fund
Production
Made in the USA or the UK.

Attribution note: produced in an edition of 20 but each atlas in each 'impression' of the edition is different.
Subjects depicted
Place depicted
Summary
One of the devices used by artist Cornelia Parker is to subject familiar everyday objects to extremes of temperature, pressure or force. The resulting transformations retain a residual trace of their original form and seem to invite the viewer to reconsider their own relationship with history and mortality.

For the suite of map works called ‘Meteorite Lands in the Middle of Nowhere: The American Series’ Parker heated a tiny meteorite and carefully scorched six selected place names in the USA on as many maps. Some of Parker’s meteorites make direct hits, others are near misses, but the associative power of the place names she has chosen is self-evident: Bagdad, Louisiana, Paris, Texas, and Bethlehem, North Carolina, are all hits; Roswell, New Mexico, Waco, Texas, and Truth or Consequences, also New Mexico, are all misses. In another series Parker has meteorites landing on sites in London.

The work plays with the almost obsessive place meteorites now have in the popular imagination, given their potential capacity to completely annihilate the earth. Parker suggests that by displacing fear onto this external threat, meteors distract humanity from the dangers it poses to itself.
Collection
Accession number
E.262-2005

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Record createdNovember 25, 2005
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